Gold As An Investment

When panic and fear dominate financial markets, gold and silver both tend to rapidly rise in price. We witnessed this during the last financial crisis, and it is starting to happen again. Because I am the publisher of a website called The Economic Collapse Blog, I am often asked about gold and silver when I do interviews. In fact, just a few days ago I was sitting right next to Jim Rickards during the taping of a television show when this topic came up. Jim expressed his belief that investing in gold is superior to investing in silver, but I had the exact opposite viewpoint. In this article, I would like to elaborate on why I believe that silver represents a historic investment opportunity right now.

I should start out by disclosing that my wife and I have been able to put away a little bit of silver over the years. I wish that it could have been a lot more, but so often there are other priorities that need to be addressed. For example, I have always said that people need to take care of their emergency food storage first before even thinking about any kind of investments.

But if you have money left over after taking care of the basics, I am fully convinced that silver is a wonderful investment for the mid to long term. In this article, I am going to explain why this is the case. However, I have always warned that you have got to be ready for a rollercoaster ride if you get into precious metals. So if you can’t handle the ups and downs, you should probably avoid them altogether.

As I write this article, the price of gold is sitting at $1254.30 an ounce.

Meanwhile, the price of silver is sitting at just $15.81 an ounce.

That means that the price of gold is currently more than 79 times higher than the price of silver. For the ratio between gold and silver to be this high is truly unusual.

You see, the truth is that there is only about 17 times as much silver as there is gold in the Earth’s crust. And currently silver is being mined at about an 11 to 1 ratio to gold.

So it makes sense that throughout history gold has typically sold at about a 15 to 1 ratio to silver.

During the years to come, I do believe that gold will multiply in price.

But I am also convinced that the price of silver will go up much, much faster.

As they both skyrocket in price, the price ratio between gold and silver will shift very quickly from 79 to 1 in the direction of 15 to 1.

Perhaps we may never even get all the way back to 15 to 1, but if we even got to 40 to 1 or 30 to 1, what that would mean for silver would be history making.

Let us also keep in mind that unlike gold, silver is constantly being used up in thousands of different industrial applications. The following comes from Jeff Nielson…

Over the past quarter century, more silver-based patents have been created than with any other metal on the planet. But not only does silver have unparalleled versatility, it is an extremely potent metal, meaning that in many of its commercial applications it is used in only trace amounts.

Why is this of significance? Because in such tiny quantities it is economically impractical to ever recycle any of this silver, at prices anywhere near the (absurd) levels of recent decades. Thus this silver is being consumed in tiny amounts, but in billions and billions of consumer products, over a span of decades.

Unlike gold, our stockpiles of silver are disappearing. As previously mentioned, for at least the last thirty years, the only way that our strong demand for silver could be satisfied has been through consuming portions of these stockpiles.

It has been estimated that approximately one billion ounces of silver have been used in consumer products over the past ten years alone.

Even if the world could somehow avoid the great financial turmoil that has already begun, the truth is that eventually a great demand crunch for silver would come just based on how much of it we are steadily consuming.

At less than 16 dollars an ounce right now, silver is ridiculously undervalued.

Those that are wise see this, and they are stocking up on silver coins at an unprecedented level. Just check out these numbers…

Silver Eagle sales will likely jump by 25% in the first quarter due to deteriorating market conditions. During the first three months last year the U.S. Mint sold 12 million Silver Eagles. Already, sales of Silver Eagles have reached 13 million. There are two weeks remaining in March and the U.S. Mint will likely sell another two million. This will put total Silver Eagle sales for the first quarter at 15 million….. the highest ever.

I have always said that I believe that the price of silver will eventually go over $100 an ounce.

When that happens, those that got in today will be exceedingly happy with their returns.

Others are projecting even greater gains. For instance, investing legend Egon von Greyerz believes that the price of silver could ultimately go as high as $660 an ounce, and Jeff Nielson believes that $1,000 an ounce for silver would be a fair price.

But once again, don’t even think about getting into precious metals until you have the basics squared away. It is often said that you can’t eat gold or silver, and that is very true.

In our new television show, my wife and I are always going to tell it to you straight. A lot of people out there are relaxing right now because they think that the recent stock market rally means that the crisis is over. What they don’t understand is that this new financial crisis is just in the very early chapters. There are going to be more ups and more downs, and the shaking that we have seen so far is just the beginning.

Many of you may not want to believe me at this moment, but by the end of 2016 life in America is going to look dramatically different than it does right now. So please get prepared while you are still able to do so.